1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to identifying groups of records correspond to the same entity with larger datasets, and, more particularly, to resolving a plurality of pairwise links of records into one or more groups of records corresponding to the same entity.
2. Related Art
There are many avenues for a customer to acquire goods or products that meet their needs or wants. One way for a customer to acquire goods is through the use of a retailer. Depending on the market strategy of the retailer, there are many different avenues for retailers to sell products. For example, retailers can sell products in physical store locations (e.g., department stores, discount stores, warehouse stores, supermarkets, etc.), online, and even through vending machines.
Given the large number of choices for a consumer to acquire products, it becomes expedient for retailers to do their best to attract and retain customers. For example, retailers may need to keep their prices low relative to their competition to attract and retain customers. Further, retailers may need to provide a good or product that is not readily available through other retail options. Without staying competitive, retail stores may have a weakened customer base, and, in turn, lose their profitability.
In order for a retail store to better meet the needs of their customers, retail stores have an interest in the shopping patterns of their customers. As understanding of customer shopping habits and tendencies increases, a retailer can offer incentives such as coupons or rebates to entice its customers to make more purchases or purchase items that may be unfamiliar to a customer. This both improves the customer shopping experience and increases retailer profit margin. Also, customer shopping experience improves, customers may be more likely to refer their friends to user the retailer (e.g., visit a store, go to the Website, etc.).
There are many ways for a store to observe the shopping habits of their customers. One way is issuing a membership card to its customers. As the customer checks out, the customer card is scanned. The store database can then keep track of which items the customer purchases, and how often the purchases are made. The store incentivizes the customer to use the card by offering reduced prices for purchases made with the card.
In addition to membership cards, retail stores can also track the shopping patterns of their customers through a customer's online activity. The store can track which items the customer viewed on their website, which items the customer searched for using the website's search feature, which items they added to their online cart, and which items they purchased.
Further, if the customer pays with a check or credit card, the store can determine if the customer has a profile within the store's database, and can associate the customer's purchases, credit card, checking account, etc., with the customer's profile.
Given the many avenues for customer's to make purchases, it becomes increasingly difficult for a retailer to match a particular customer to all of their interactions with the retailer. For example, some of the customer's purchases may be made online with one credit card, other purchases may be made at a store with a different credit card, and remaining purchases may be made using a membership card and paying by cash or check. In addition, many retail stores have more than one type of retail store. For example, some retailers may operate both a discount store and a warehouse store. Identifying a customer of the discount store and a customer of the warehouse store as the same customer can be difficult.
As retail stores accumulate customer data through purchases or other interactions, an enormous amount of data is created, for example, for some retailers billions of records. As mentioned previously, many of these records may have been created through different types of customer interaction; whether they bought the items online, with a membership card, with a credit card, at the retailer's discount store, at the retailer's warehouse store, or some combination thereof. It can be very challenging to sort through the vast amount of records in order to associate each record with the customer that created the record.